The Golden State Warriors have reached out to Turner Sports to discuss Shaquille O'Neal's ongoing coverage of center JaVale McGee, league sources told ESPN.

Sources told ESPN that the Warriors contacted Turner officials to express concern about TNT's yearslong McGee coverage on the "Shaqtin' a Fool" segment on the popular "Inside The NBA" show, with the team contending that the ongoing negative portrayal of the veteran center is doing unnecessary damage to McGee's reputation.

A Turner source confirmed the discussions with the Warriors and told ESPN that "the matter has been discussed internally" after a Twitter feud erupted Thursday night between O'Neal and McGee.

Just when you think Shaq can't get any worse as an analyst. I'm no fan of the Warriors or JaVale McGee, but it's disgustingly childish and unprofessional, and not nearly as clever or witty as he thinks he's being. Still, judging by the responses to his Tweets, it seems a lot of people think it's comedy gold, which makes the situation even sadder. Shaq's a bully who isn't as funny as he and his sycophantic fans think he is, and he's long past overdue to grow up. Turner needs to grow a spine, and stand up to him.

The funny thing is that it was only a few weeks ago that he was chiding Charles Barkley for "making it personal" with LeBron James. Right now, he's making it even more personal with McGee. Look, we can get on our high horse and criticise the younger generation for being soft and too worried about what people are saying, and maybe we'll have a point. But Shaq is definitely being a brat here, and a hypocrite to boot. There's no dignity in what he's doing.

have you been reading the tweets back and forth? its amazing how childish shaq actually is. all i hope from this is shaq says something stupid and gets fired so the show can start to pick back up again

I haven't seen them all, but I've seen enough to know that if I keep reading them, I'm at a risk of damaging my optic nerves from all the eye-rolling. I agree; the childishness is just astonishing, and kind of sad, really.

Agreed. The fact that he's notoriously thin-skinned himself makes it rather hypocritical. Shaq's in a safe position: he gets to make fun of people, especially players he has some kind of beef with, on national television where they can't immediately rebut anything he says or defend themselves in any way. When they do respond, he holds his accomplishments over their heads (as if that automatically justifies everything he says), or plays the "it's just a joke, you just can't take a joke" card. He plays the clown, the former superstar and larger-than-life personality who's "just goofing around", but that masks how petty, vindictive, and mean-spirited he can be.

It's nothing new, but he's over 40, and in broadcasting now. It's well past time for him to grow up.

its the same thing he has been doing to barkley. get into an argument then just say "the rings" instead of coming up with any logical point. this is exactly why i want kobe to come on the show and when shaq says something he can just reply with "like i would listen to someone with only 4 rings". i think shaq would legit die on stage right then and there.

“I have orders from the top to leave it alone,” O’Neal said past midnight on Saturday.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver?

“No,” O’Neal said. “My mama. Just say Shaq’s mom called him, told him, ‘Stop this silliness. Leave him alone.’ So that’s the end of the beef. You won’t be hearing about it from my side anymore. Mama has spoken.”

Meanwhile, McGee's mother's comments seem to be drawing a lot of scorn - including cries of "snowflake", since that term is so popular these days - and the wording probably has something to do with it. She has a point, though. Players get fined $25,000 for expressing the sentiment that the referees did a bad job, even if it's later determined they did do a bad job. I don't know about this being grounds to fire Shaq (even if I do think he's the weak link on the show), but some kind of reprimand from TNT would be appropriate.

Lmfao, just noticed that on Monday, during the TNT "Players Only" special, because of all the bad reputation Shaqtin has got these few last days, they gave positive awards for outstanding performances...like 3 of them. Davis had one, Webber had one, Isiah Thomas had one. Bosh should've had one.

It seems like they were trying to portray it as self-deprecating and "Shaq can take it as well as dish it out", but something about it seemed...I don't know, a bit petty and passive-aggressive? Like, they promised never to mention McGee again, but they've found a way to still take shots at him for supposedly being too sensitive. See, they're totally not talking about him, wink-wink! It's kind of like schoolyard bullies getting into trouble, and then finding a more covert way to bully their victims in order to "punish" them because they dared to get the bullies into trouble.

Incidentally, while a few comments on that YouTube video call McGee a baby, overly sensitive, and whatnot, I think these two hit the nail on the head:

Pretty on point. When a false dichotomy won't work, go to Morton's fork instead. As noted in that first comment, if McGee says nothing, he's a wimp because won't stand up for himself. If he stands up for himself, he's still a wimp because he can't take a joke. There's no correct course of action for him to take, he's in the wrong and destined to be the butt of the joke no matter what. It probably would've been less effort for Shaq to say "Sorry not sorry."

I admit that I can't help but feel I'm making a bigger deal out of it than it is, but the lack of professionalism, and smug, somewhat mean-spirited nature of it does rankle me, especially because of Shaq being so thin-skinned himself. There's kidding around and having a laugh, and then there's crossing the line into being a straight up douchebag...and then there's going even further and revelling in the fact that you're an unapologetic douchebag. It feels like Shaq crossed that line, and is pouting because someone had the nerve to call him out on taking it a bit too far.

Jesus Christ, Shaq and Kenny should fucking makeout already. Kenny always talking about Shaq like he is the GOAT, no question asked. "I haven't seen you miss twice in a row". Gimme a fucking break...even when they have the intention to show Shaq is human they can't do it properly.That's Kenny's thing now. Kissing Shaq's ass in advance so if he ever gets into an argument with Chuck, Shaq can back him up. I remember actually enjoying his style until he got that crappy reality show of his. The moment the show started airing, his personality turned 180 degrees and I couldn't believe the same person was sitting between EJ and Chuck. Everything he did was exagerated and he started acting like something he never was. I couldn't find a video of it from Monday night, but my favorite part was when I found out "Meet the Smiths" was actually in the bottom 100 TV shows from last year in popularity.

Incidentally, Shaq's latest is that Durant has no right to come after him (read: stand up for his teammate), because KD's NBA resume isn't as impressive as Shaq's. Mind you, I remember Shaq saying "Wilt Chamberlain can kiss my ass" back in 1997, when his resume wasn't that much better than Durant's, and certainly not better than Wilt's. I guess it was somehow different when Shaq was the brash young star twenty years ago, taking bratty shots at the players who came before him.